Zinhar (2005)

Zinhar started as a small website in 2003. This website was going to contain poems and critiques about poems and poetry in general. Meanwhile I was also searching for the ways of publishing the magazine electronically. Because the possibility of publishing the magazine and getting into contact with readers and writers by using the means of press was restricted, and because of the high demand of the people who want to publish their magazines, it became much harder to be able to survive in the crowd. Under these circumstances the first issue of Zinhar came out which was named as “Centrifugal” (choosing this name for the issue was not a coincidence).

Zinhar came out as an objection (resistance) to the people who were publishing something under the title of “poetry”, to the imprudence of poetry which became apparent in the 90’s and to the attitudes of the writers and readers who have capitalized and Mcdonaldized the history and the objects of the poetry.

This objection was for emphasizing that “poetry should not be displayed in such ways” and also it was determined to call attention to the tension between the insulative (intransitive) and closed structure of the literature society and the uncontrollable flaneurship of the internet wanderer (surfer) which was totally opposite to the other.

But then we realized that the tension was mainly a result of the problems occurring in the public mechanism, and the change and deterioration in their perception of the poetry. Moreover we also realized that both sides were reacting wrongly to these changes.

We believe that the poetry of the “Oral/Literary” culture is not sufficient enough to respond to the means of “Visual/Literary” culture which keeps on both unbuilding and then building us every moment. As a consequence poetikhars.com and Poetik Har(s) intends to visualize the “individual experience” both by using the media of press and electronics and by deconstructing the codes of the 21st century’s “coded” life searches for the new ways for the poetry in the history of it.

Besides the Zinhar website, there is also a magazine which is not published periodically and only delivered (under restricted conditions) to the readers who demand it by sending e-mail to us.

Our aim is to provide visualization in the poetry by substituting the typographical possibilities for the conventional possibilities (facilities) of poetry and to define the visualization of poetry as a value. In this context Zinhar Magazine is prepared by the works of Baris Özgür, Özcan Türkmen, Tarik Günersel, Ali Ömer Akbulut, Evrim Önk, Bahar Senol, Sakir Özüdogru, Ulas Basar Gezgin, Asli Serin since the beginning; and from now on it will be published by including the works of the people who are especially creating visual/concrete/experimental poetry.

It is important to emphasize that Zinhar aims to step in the areas of the Turkish Poetry History which are not stepped in (utilized) before in the context of the presentation of the poetry. The Second New Poetry (2. Yeni Siiri) movement had only dealt with the oral/literary presentation of the poetry and left the visualization of the historical material to the facilities of the “text”. However the “text” itself is no longer sufficient to express the whirlpools of life, and what it can do is only reproduce images made of “word series” that are incapable of decoding the coded practicals (acts) of life.

In fact poetry is a mechanism that allows us to produce anti-codes by the help of these interventions against the codes that are imposed on us by the city/life. In an area in which everything can be “symbolized” within, whether it is mystic, semiotic or something related to justice, poetry can criticize itself only by resolving these attacks which block its ways and by not allowing everyday life to reduce its space.

In this context the stem (body) of the poetry should be transformed from word and sound into a series (flow) of graphical presentation.

Zinhar is DADA! In other words Dyonisiac Appollonian Dyonisiac Appollonian!